In Greek mythology, Chaos was the first thing that exist. It contained all the elements together in a “shapeless heap”. Eros (Love), Gaia (The Earth) and Erebus (Darkness) born from Chaos. Is a primordial state that contains all the seeds together.

In Mathematics, the Chaos theory, is a dynamic system, that states that even in chaotic systems, there is an underlying pattern which depend highly on the initial conditions. Is the called “effect butterfly” in which a little change on the initial conditions (the flight of a butterfly) can leads to a significant different outcome, such as a Tornado.

Chaos is a strong force, but not necessarily it is destructive. Maybe is necessary.

In an organization everything is related. Any little change in one end, could affect a totally different part. Like the flight of the butterfly, a single unfortunate email could lead to a huge conflict in an organization. On the…

I am lucky. I spent Christmas alone. No family dinner, no presents. I know. It sounds like The Grinch talking. Bitter. Maybe resentful too. But is true, I really enjoyed time alone and quiet. The city was very quiet too. Everybody was busy preparing dinner, wrapping gifts, decorating, and making cookies. I had time alone and quiet. Did I feel weird for that? I didn’t (maybe I am so totally a weirdo that I am not conscious about it).

It wasn’t easy at first. Friends asked me about what were my plans for Christmas. And when I said “nothing”, they couldn’t resist giving me all kind of solutions and words of sympathy (like “I am sorry”). And I don’t judge them. I mean is supposed to be a day of family reunion and I was doing an opposite act, and with a unconcerned attitude.

Once upon a time, in the corporate world, managers go out in a sort of retreat for a couple of days to define the strategic plan for the next 5 years. On those days, with door closed, they review the good, the not so good and the bad moves occurred during the period. Conclusions and promises are made. And like new year’s resolution a list of new purposes and objectives are defined with the best of the intentions.

When they go back to the headquarters, they prepared campaigns to communicate enthusiastically all the new goals and purposes. Most of the times, the employees received them with grim humor and with “just more work to do” attitude. Finally after 6 months or so, the list of 20 new projects, is reduced to three big projects, that takes a double time than expected.

I decided to write this blog, in order to share my experiences as an HR professional. After 10 years of working in many different companies, I have faced some situations where HR seems to get trapped, and that I believe are not son infrequent in daily practice.

I don’t want to state that in HR there are only these kind of situations. I can recall a lot of successful stories. But I really think is important for HR professionals to be aware and to avoid these “puzzling” situations.

Please feel free to comment and share your opinion:

Situation 1 HR Trends

I think is very tempting for HR teams, to get trapped in the initiative “of the moment”. This happens for example with talent management. Many companies are changing names of their systems, for example, instead of recruitment is “talent acquisition”. Nevertheless, is these trends really adequate for the culture, strategy and stage of maturity of the company. In many cases, Talent management is implemented without having any other system before, and in my opinion, to identify and measure talent require a company that at least is used to have performance metrics in the past. The tip is to ask, is this initiative strategically relevant to my company? Is it prepared to implement it successfully?

Situation 2 HR Kafkian Trap

Franz Kafka in his book “The Process” describes a public organization with countless procedures and controls. I think in HR there is a tendency that could lead us to this Kafkian world. For example, I remember to invest hundreds of hours in building a very comprehensive competencies manual that finally becomes unpractical and confusing for managers. It was just too much. This could happen with recruitment, training, or any HR initiative. I think the secret to avoid this is always ask: How in the world this will be applied? and is the application user-friendly?

Situation 3. The User Problem

This is when some HR initiatives are very innovative and cool, but nobody are really using them in the appropriate way. For example a company could have an incredible performance management system, but if the managers don’t know how to give effective feedback and set goals, the system will lost all its power of change. I think is very important to avoid this, to train the users and to reinforce the appropriate use always

I hope you find interesting this examples, and feel free to give me suggestions.